This disclosure relates generally to social networking systems, and in particular to presenting advertisements to social networking system users.
Social networking systems allow users to connect to and communicate with other users of the social networking system. Users create profiles on the social networking system that are tied to their identities and include information about the users, such as interests and demographic information. The users may be individuals or entities such as corporations or charities. Because of the increasing popularity of social networking systems and the significant amount of user-specific information maintained by social networking systems, a social networking system allows a business or brand to increase awareness about its products or services via a social networking system. For example, presenting advertisements to social networking system users allows an advertiser to gain public attention for products or services or to persuade social networking system users to take an action regarding the advertiser's products, services, opinions, or causes. Social networking systems frequently charge advertisers for presenting advertisements to its users, allowing the social networking system to obtain revenue from advertisement presentation.
Users increasingly access social networking systems through mobile devices, or other devices that have one or more states providing users with limited functionality. For example, many devices have a “locked state” that responds to a reduced set of inputs from the user and passively displays information to a user. Conventional social networking systems may present a limited amount of content to users while a device associated with the user is in a state providing the user with limited functionality. While advertisements may be included in the content presented while a device is in a state providing limited functionality, these advertisements may prompt users to perform actions unable to be performed while the device is in the state providing limited functionality. This decreases the likelihood of a user performing an action associated with an advertisement presented while a device is in a state providing limited functionality.